Something unusual was amiss in the media this week: climate activists were hating on Bill Gates. It all started with Gates publishing a blog post ahead of the UN Climate Conference next week that suggested perhaps we have all been a bit too focused on emission and proposed that “temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on the climate.” The pivot was widely covered as a “stunning claim” that amounted to a betrayal and led to plenty of criticism:
“By arguing emissions shouldn’t be such an important benchmark for climate action, Gates is pushing a narrative that lets polluters off the hook. It sounds like a well-meaning rich guy not actually experiencing what’s happening on the ground, or understanding what people really need.”
There’s more to this story. Bill Gates is someone who has spent much of the last 25 years advocating for climate solutions. His recent book was titled How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. And now he is suggesting that there is something missing in the current debate about the effects of rising global temperatures. What is it that we should be focused on but aren’t?
What Gates outlines in his post is the idea that we spend too much time focused on near-term solutions to try and reduce emissions when we should be focused on funding, evangelizing and spreading green energy innovations that have the potential to make life better for everyone:
With the right investments and policies in place, over the next ten years we will have new affordable zero-carbon technologies ready to roll out at scale. Add in the impact of the tools we already have, and by the middle of this century emissions will be lower and the gap between poor countries and rich countries will be greatly reduced.
All countries will be able to construct buildings with low-carbon cement and steel. Almost all new cars will be electric. Farms will be more productive and less destructive, using fertilizer created without generating any emissions. Power grids will deliver clean electricity reliably, and energy costs will go down.
So why am I optimistic that innovation will curb climate change? For one thing, because it already has. In the past 10 years, we’ve cut projected emissions by more than 40 percent. This progress is not part of the prevailing view of climate change, but it should be.
Of course, this is a bold and perhaps naive perspective that “sometimes human welfare takes a backseat to lowering emissions, with bad consequences.” But if innovation is the ultimate (and perhaps only) solution to save humanity, wouldn’t it make sense to drive more investment and resources and attention toward this goal instead of just reducing emissions? In other words, maybe Bill Gates is right.